As with fear of abandonment the cancer of toxic jealousy remains for an entire lifetime, because unlike healthy jealousy it is not just influenced by sex, but by control. If sex was the main cause of the jealousy it might ease with age, but toxic jealousy is equally intense as a control mechanism irrespective of age. I have known older people cursed with the impulse to control, harbouring intense jealousy. Indeed, the controlling impulse can often increase with age.
Donald Dutton refers to toxic jealousy in an intimate relationship as conjugal paranoia, as the would-be perpetrator boils with anger and fear and incessantly ruminates about the partner, entering a negative fear-filled world that sometimes culminates in violence and perhaps suicide. The thought of losing the partner becomes unbearable and the ability to control the impulse to kill is sometimes lost. It is estimated that at least a quarter of all murders involve a jealous partner. Dutton makes the point that such jealous perpetrators are split between the violent and the remorseful parts of themselves. Two very different selves, two opposite selves joined by the glue of the hidden fear of being abandoned. The angry self is terrorised at the thought of losing the partner, and the repentant self pleads to prevent the separation.
When there is fear of abandonment, there is no ease, but always an elaborately constructed, negative and torturous imaginary world containing imaginary rivals. Unless you have experienced it, it is difficult to understand the terror that arises in the fear-filled person at the thought of these imaginary rivals. Suspicion corrodes the soul and the very sense of self is threatened by the threat of abandonment.
THERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
PSYCHOTHERAPISTS IN TIPPERARY
COUNSELLING TIPPERARY
DEATH OF A CHILD
ABUSE AND DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
FEAR
ANGER
JEALOUSY
SHAME